Trump says he has agreed to 3 debates in September

Former President Trump during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort Thursday said he had agreed to three separate debates on three different networks against his new opponent, Vice President Harris.

Trump scheduled the press conference as his campaign seeks to make Harris’s access to the media a campaign issue. Trump had previously said he would not take part in a scheduled debate on ABC that was initially set on Sept. 10 between him and President Biden.

But ABC in a statement during Trump’s press conference said both he and Harris had agreed to a debate on Sept. 10.

The former president also said Thursday he had proposed debates with Fox News on Sept. 4 and NBC on Sept. 25.

“We have spoken to the heads of the network and it’s all been confirmed other than some very minor details,” including whether the Harris campaign agrees to any of those dates, Trump said.

“I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight,” Trump said.

Harris responded to Trump’s comments in a post on X, welcoming the Sept. 10 debate.

“I hear that Donald Trump has finally committed to debating me on September 10,” she wrote. “I look forward to it.”

She did not mention the other two dates.

The former president had cited ongoing litigation against ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos as a reason he would not attend an ABC event, though he had accepted the network as a host after filing the lawsuit.

Harris’s team has called out Trump for backing out of the ABC News debate and said the vice president intends to use that time to appear on the network regardless of whether he attends.

Trump had in recent weeks increasingly hedged about debating Harris, initially saying he would “absolutely” square off with the vice president but later saying he could think of reasons not to do so.

This story was updated at 5:21 p.m.